I don’t believe I can really do without teaching.  The reason is, I have to have something so that when I don’t have any ideas and I’m not getting anywhere I can say to myself, “At least I’m living; at least I’m doing something; I’m making some contribution”—it’s just psychological.

People need justice.

I have a tip that can take 5 strokes off anyone's golf game. It's called an eraser.

It's not possible to get any distance from my project: being alive. Objectively, from the outside you might say, my life is terrible, unbelievable. And it's true, I hate this. I hate the way I am at the moment. But there is no objective view, I am here, in it, and there is nothing else, and this fact brings with it many things that make it of course easier. And beyond that there are many other things to think about.

Those are important, but there is still a need for any youngster who has any scientific interest at all to continue the lead that we have on technology in the world today, if we are interested in the future of the United States.

I didn’t like it at all. This problem is called Meniere’s syndrome. It causes dizziness, nausea, lack of balance and so on. The prediction was that in some cases it was correctable. I said, “In my case it is going to be correctable.”

It would have to be that one lady teacher in grade school. All six grades, one room, 25 students. She was about nine feet tall as I recall and a very tough disciplinarian. Always had the ruler ready to whack the knuckles if somebody got out of hand. She ran a very well-disciplined group. I think most of the youngsters responded to that. There were one or two that couldn’t handle it and obviously they dropped by the wayside. But that still sticks out in my mind.

I would say that they have to know deep down inside that it’s something that they really want to do, themselves. It’s not to please mommy or daddy, not to please Uncle Harry because he did this, or daddy did that. It has to be because you know you are qualified to do it, and if you apply yourself, you can do it.

And I think that still is true of this business — which is basically research and development — that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.

Oh, absolutely. I was delighted when I was assigned command of the first Gemini flight with Tom Stafford as my co-pilot, but it was shortly after that I developed a disorientation problem in my ear, and NASA grounded me. I was grounded for almost six years.